Hampton Roads Conference

The Hampton Roads Conference was a peace conference held between the United States and the Confederate States on 3 February 1865 aboard the steamboat River Queen in Hampton Roads, Virginia, to discuss peace terms during the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward, representing the Union, met with Confederate commissioners Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Senator Robert M.T. Hunter, and Assistant Secretary of War John Archibald Campbell. They discussed a possible alliance against France, the possible terms of surrender, the question of whether slavery might persist after the war, and whether the American South would be compensated for property lost through emancipation. However, the only concrete agreement was reached over prisoner-of-war exchanges, as the North had just outlawed slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment, and the peace talks failed.